The Advantage of Having a Body?
There is an important difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence—however advanced AI becomes. We have a body that contributes to our intelligence. For example, AI identifies facial expressions by following a preprogrammed algorithm; when it detects certain shapes it labels them to a particular emotion. We embodied beings do not solely compute the shapes of expressions, we also imperceptibly copy and experience those facial expressions. This provides us with direct shared experience enabling good prediction of what the person might do next.
I have, in my book ANOTHER SELF, proposed that this difference might save us from subordination to artificial super intelligence. It looks like a weak hope….
“GO” is the hardest board game in the world, much harder than chess. Incredibly popular in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan GO a strategic game for two players who take turns placing black or white stones on the intersections of a grid with the goal of surrounding and capturing territory while strategically outmanoeuvring the opponent. Players need to predict the intentions of the other player. The number of potential moves outnumber the atoms in the universe (whoever makes such calculations?).
In 2016 a tech company, DeepMind (UK) were training AI on GO to assess how good it was at thinking strategically on its own. They had reached a point where it was winning all the time, so they named it AlphaGo and decided it was time to test it against the best human GO player on the planet.
Lee Sedol, an unbeaten champion of ‘Go’, slight of build, soft of voice, humble and polite was a Korean superstar celebrity who spent his time travelling from hotel to hotel, match to match, like a rock star. Fans bowed to him when he passed by and he was venerated as a national hero.
Lee was the perfect person to challenge AlphaGo.
A televised match—best of five games—was promoted as “UK vs South Korea” but as Lee pointed out in his introductory speech, this was a unique moment in history; no longer was he playing for his region or even his country, he was now playing for his species— human vs machine. Could AIphaGo beat an unbeatable human?
The match over five days was followed live by 70 million viewers. Lee was confident because GO is a game of intuition, not mere computation.
Lee lost the first game. The shock for everyone was palpable and the news briefing that followed was silent. The fallen hero hung his head in disbelief. One journalist broke the silence shouting, “We believe in you!” The next day, he lost the second game. Lee was broken, confused, and apologetic to his fans, his country, his species. Some journalists were crying. Even the AlphaGo team were quiet, witnessing the end of an era. Their programming had broken the best of the best ‘humans’ and it did not feel good.
Lee took a day off before the third game to work out what was happening. He knew that this game relied on intuition so how was a machine beating him?
He realised that he could not predict AlphaGo’s next move because it had no body language for him to read. Up until now he had been able to read his opponent by studying their body language but because such processes are unconscious, he had not appreciated how much he relied on his opponent’s body informing his intuition. Lee had no knowledge of recent discoveries showing that our brains couple as we try to understand each other. He had no idea that his body and his opponent’s body would come into physiological synchrony to predict each other’s intentions. He did not know that he needed to feel how his opponent felt. Not being able to share his opponents’ emotional arousal was hindering his intuition. Now, up against AI without a body, he needed to find a different strategy. He would have to adjust the way he predicted how an artificial mind worked.
Without explaining his new approach, he won the next game, and everyone was jubilant—even team AlphaGo. This was not quite ‘game over’ for humans.
It was, however, the only game Lee won, and the GO community was thrown into a frenzy of analysis. AlphaGo had come up with strategies not seen by human players and these are still being studied in depth. Over time, a few GO experts found minor weaknesses in AlphaGo and a glimmer of hope returned but Lee Sedol was so battered by this emotionless intelligence that he gave up the game and walked away into early retirement.
The documentary “AlphaGo” is currently available on Netflix.
My book “Another Self: How Your body Helps You Understand Others” is available on Amazon and Kindle
